Options for Publishing Equestrian Fiction

One housekeeping note: I added a search option to this blog. You can now search for your favorite posts. It's at the top of the right column.
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I know a lot of people who read this blog are aspiring authors in equestrian fiction. I thought I'd blog today about publishing alternatives for equestrian fiction.

Equestrian fiction is a hard-sell to a large publisher. The books just don't sell well enough. Of course, there are always exceptions, such as The Horse Whisperer, but those exceptions are few and far between. Authors today have some exciting options in publishing which weren't available in the past. I thought I'd cover those options for our aspiring authors out there.

Small presses are becoming a home to niche markets. Fiction which only serves a specialized group of readers isn't a good risk for large publishers. The writers might be as good or better than writers for big publishers, but they've chosen to write in an area which is not popular with the masses.

There are three basic kinds of publishers, you can consider:

New York Publisher (large press): These publishers typically have offices in New York City. They do large print runs for their author's books, which are distributed to book stores. They pay royalties (a percentage of the book's cover price, usually about 6-8 percent). The author gets paid an advance before the book hits the shelf.

Vanity Publisher (Self-Published): These presses typically publish anyone if you have the money to pay them. You will be expected to pay for things such as cover design, editing (if there is any), may have limited distribution, if any. They are good choices if you're publishing something for a targeted group of people, such as a family history.

Small Press (includes epub or Epublisher): These presses operate like NY presses. They do not charge any fees to the author. They provide editing, cover art, and distribution. The distribution varies between publishers. They pay a small advance nor none at all.

I find that there are two primary types of small presses:

Electronic or ePubs: Their books are primarily available electronically. They usually do not pay an advance unless it’s quite small. The author earns royalties (usually about 30-40 percent) from the cover price of the book sold in the small press’s bookstore and royalties from the distributor (usually a percentage of what the publisher receives). Many of these presses also offer their books in print via print on demand (see definition below) and through distributors such as Barnes and Noble and Amazon.

Traditional Small Presses: These presses do small print runs. Their books may or may not be available via other distributors. They may pay a small advance. I'll admit that I don't know much about this type of press. So if someone can fill us in, that'd be great. I think Laura is with a press like this.

Here's some other terminology you might have heard batted around:
Print Run: NY pubs do a print run of each book published. The books are then distributed to bookstores. Unsold books can be returned to the publisher for a refund. Returns of fifty percent or more are not uncommon.

Print on Demand (POD): This is a green alternative to print books. Over half of the books printed by NY pubs are not sold and are destroyed. Print-on-Demand books are printed when the buyer places an order. They are usually more expensive to buy as the process is more expensive than a print run. POD books are rarely available in bookstores because they are not returnable. POD is often confused with self-publishing. While it's a method self-publishers use, it's also used by small presses to get their books in print.

I'm finding more and more equestrian fiction available through small publishers. They're willing to take the risk and fill a niche with readers hungry for such books. As I do searches on Amazon for horse-related fiction, I find more and more popping up every month, compared to years ago when there were few choices.

If you're interested in knowing more, let me know.

On a personal note, Gailey is doing very well. We're back in full work, and she's moving well and seems to be pain-free. The leg is still big, and I'm considering some alternate therapies.

The Art of Hanging In There

Hi Everyone!

I've been so impressed with the interesting, informative posts by my fellow Equestrian Ink authors on the process of getting published. I thought I would share the circumstances under which I worked up my courage to send in my query letters for A Dangerous Dream.

As some of you may know, I wrote my first novel, A Dangerous Dream, while I was on bedrest with a twin pregnancy. I had never written fiction in my life but had always dreamed of doing so. My poor husband had lost track of which novels he'd already bought me among the stacks piling up in my bedroom, so in desperation I started making up my own stories while I lay there with the approximate mobility of a beached whale.

In between cravings for ice cream and lobster (my husband got major kudos from my family and friends for the amount of take-out lobster dinners he served me in bed), I started pecking away on a laptop (which was a considerable balancing act seeing as I had no lap). Before long my page count started growing even faster than my belly, which is really saying something.

Needless to say, when the obstetrician said we aren't going to hold off the grand entrance of the twins any longer and I delivered my two amazing boys, the nearly completed novel went on the back burner. It was a rude awakening (no pun intended) to realize that our newborn twins were not in sync on night time awakenings. Despite all attenpts to try for 12:30 and 4 AM, night feedings often were more like 11, 1, 3, and 5 AM. A few months later, when my brain was approaching the consistency of oatmeal, a friend suggested I join a group of some kind which was unrelated to my mommy job.

I was so involved with the kids the thought of doing something for myself seemed completely alien. The only other interest nagging at the back of my mind was the novel I had written. I joined Romance Writers of America and with absolutely no idea what I was doing sent off a couple of query letters to agents and got polite rejection letters.







My husband, bless his heart, encouraged me to keep going on writing so I went to an RWA meeting and was told about an organization called PRO for writers who completed a novel but hadn't sold one yet. She told me I needed a rejection letter from a publisher to join so I figured that would be easy enough to come by. In my sleep deprived state it didn't occur to me my two agent rejection letters would have sufficed, so onward I trudged looking for a publisher to send my book and get a rejection letter for a PRO application.

I learned that the turnaround on queries was generally fairly quick with epublishers so I quickly wrote out a query letter and sent it off to two epubs members of my local RWA chapter had published with and found to be reputable. About two months later, when my boys sleep schedule was finally stretching out, I was up early checking email and I saw an email from one of the epubs I'd queried. The subject line said contract so I took a sip of my coffee, blinked a few times, and tried reading it again. It still said Contract so I took a deep breath and opened it.

There it was. In place of the expected rejection was a contract offer. I jumped up and realized that for the first time in a long time the whole family was asleep. Drat! I looked at my heroic husband and didn't have the heart to wake him so I had to wait for the boys next call for food. My daughter, by the way, learned to sleep through just about anything. It didn't hurt that her baby brothers had her wrapped around their little fingers.

When Eric awoke and repeated my blinking re-read of the email we had a decision to make. We had never dreamed of having the opportunity to publish so soon and I was very concerned that the book could be made much better with more time and attention. Eric came up with the point that finally decided us. He reminded me that most authors wind up putting their 'learning book' in a drawer. Here was an opportunity for us to keep learning from it.

And learn we did. I had the opportunity to learn web design, online chats, an array of marketing and promotional venues, and the all important review process. Best of all, I got wonderful feedback from readers and the opportunity to be a part of Equestrian Ink. The epublishing market did not bring in revenue as a traditional publisher would have, but the learning experience was invaluable.

I suppose my story is that great things can come when you least expect it. I thought our miracles were complete with our beatiful, health three children, but we got a bonus. A second career and here's the best part - my husband is working with me on my current novel. It's a contemporary fantasy where the structure and function of an international society of witches mirrors that of the real life intelligence community. My husband was the TA in graduate school for a course titled Intelligence and Covert Operations. He never guessed he'd be using that background to help his wife write a novel!

The paths to publication are many and varied but never give up. Your own miracle might be just around the corner!

Cheers,
Mary